SEO TIPS: Is reaching the #1 Position on Google worth the cost?

For many businesses, it is not too difficult to get some keywords on the first page of Google, even part way up the page – say position 5, in the middle of the page with a moderate amount of investment into SEO. But from there, the climb can get steep and can take an exponentially greater amount of work to climb the last few notches up the ladder.

That begs the question: is it worth the time and cost to get to the #1 position?

If your business makes its profit through web sales, or from the search traffic Google drives to your site (whether directly or indirectly), then the answer is simply to ask yourself: is that expense worth a nearly 9x increase in revenue to you?

According to Aaron Wall, who is one of the founding fathers of the SEO community (and considered the chief SEO expert by some), the #1 position on Google is worth 8.5 times the #5 position. That means if you’re earning $1 for every click, you’d get nearly 9x more dollars if your site was in the #1 position.

If your business is struggling along at $1,000 in revenue per month, you could see it jump to liberating $8,500 per month (small local businesses, consider that one carefully!), or watch $3,000 become $25,000+

If you’re pulling in $25k a month in the fifth Google position, how’d you like to see that go to nearly $210,000/month? Or go from $120,000 a month to make one million per month. Is that worth the “cost” to you? (that’s why we typically call SEO an “investment”, not a “cost”).

Consider the diagram below:
If you’re currently in the #5 position, and you’re getting the amount of traffic in column A, then if you can get to the #1 position, you’ll be getting the amount of traffic shown in column B instead:

(note: these figures are slightly rounded to improve legibility)

300        2,550
800        6,800
1,400        12,000
2,600        22,000
3,500        30,000
6,000        51,000
10,000        85,000
40,000        340,000
80,000        680,000
120,000        1,000,000

You can see that even a small business stands to gain considerably by climbing to the #1 position.
Find the number in the table above that is nearest to your average traffic, figure out your conversion rate, and see how much you could improve. Don’t know your current traffic stats or conversion rate? Let us set up analytics for you and you can start monitoring your site’s progress.)

After increasing your traffic with improved SEO, the next logical step is to improve your conversion rate.

If you need help with your SEO or your conversion rates, don’t wait even one minute – please, do yourself a favor and contact us right now. You can’t afford not to.

About the author

Digital Marketing Consultant, AdWords PPC Traffic Specialist and certified ASK Method Associate. My goal is to deliver the best start-to-finish high-performance digital marketing my clients could ever hope for.

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